There was a sort of weird limbo between the time the states seceeded and the attack on fort sumter. Federal troops we're stationed in Fort Sumter, which was considered Union property/territory. Eventually, fort sumter was attacked and the civil war began.

Some people point out that the union was the aggressor, only attacking the south because they decided to secede.

Others point to the South starting the civil war for seceding in the first place.

Still others point to the attack on fort Sumter as the South being the aggressor for attacking federal property initiating rebellion.

And again, others say that fort sumter being part of South Carolina should've been peacefully relinquished by the federal government. But this would've implid recognition the Confederacy by the union.

Regardless, I'd say it was a net positive for the United States and the those enslaved that the south was defeated and the union came out as the victor. Whether or not the union or the south was the aggressor doesn't matter. The war ended and the question of slavery was decided.

I agree that the Union was AN aggressor, and that it turned out to be better at being aggressive.

I disagree with saying that the Union started the war.

Recognition of the Confederacy by the Union not only would have been an acceptance of slavery and of the dissolution of the nation, but it would have also been a betrayal of those millions of southerners, American citizens, who believed in America and had suddenly become hostage to the slavers and traitors. Fighting these things is reasonable justification for aggression.

IMO calling it The War of Northern Aggression is simplistic and deliberately deceptive as part of the "Noble Cause" revisionism.

All that said, with "616,222–1,000,000+ dead" and 1.7M or more total casualties, the Civil War was the worst thing to ever happen to America. As billy.pilgrim says, "we continue to fight it 150 years later", and we can trace a lot of our current fucked up politics back to it. Slavery would have eventually ended, regardless, and I fault Lincoln, along with the CSA, for not finding a wiser path.

I agree that the Union was AN aggressor, and that it turned out to be better at being aggressive.

I disagree with saying that the Union started the war.

Point conceded

Recognition of the Confederacy by the Union not only would have been an acceptance of slavery and of the dissolution of the nation, but it would have also been a betrayal of those millions of southerners, American citizens, who believed in America and had suddenly become hostage to the slavers and traitors. Fighting these things is reasonable justification for aggression.

Really? Just who was in charge of this noble cause? I believe Lincoln promised to leave slavery alone.

IMO calling it The War of Northern Aggression is simplistic and deliberately deceptive as part of the "Noble Cause" revisionism.

Good point - mostly

All that said, with "616,222–1,000,000+ dead" and 1.7M or more total casualties, the Civil War was the worst thing to ever happen to America. As billy.pilgrim says, "we continue to fight it 150 years later", and we can trace a lot of our current fucked up politics back to it. Slavery would have eventually ended, regardless, and I fault Lincoln, along with the CSA, for not finding a wiser path.

Agreed

Question - there's been a lot said about the constant reminders Confederate monuments have on the descendents of people held as slaves and the construction of these monuments in the early 1900s (I agree that they should come down), but I've never heard anyone say that putting Lincoln all over our money during the same time would have a similar effect on the southerners who lost loved ones in the war and had to use the money.

Was Lincoln added to the money as a jab at the losers? I don't know but expect that it was.

George Carlin said “The owners know the truth. It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

As far as I know, Lincoln only appears on the penny and the five dollar bill; the penny began in 1909 and is probably the longest lived single coin in US history as the same design (the back of it changed after 1959). I don't know when Lincoln first appeared on the five dollar bill, but I generally like to see these presidents on money. Not so much Lincoln; I sort of prefer Franklin or even Wilson. Merry Christmas. The south started the civil war and lost it. It was the biggest crowd in any conflict in history, ever. Period. As for Confederate monuments and memorials, I can understand the emotional attachment the sponsors of the memorials have about them, but the fact remains that Nathan Bedford Forrest or Jeff Davis don't appear on any US money. I have every hope and belief that Trump will direct the Treasury to print up some trillion dollar bills with someone other than his face on them and save the god damn economy. ok

Recognition of the Confederacy by the Union not only would have been an acceptance of slavery and of the dissolution of the nation, but it would have also been a betrayal of those millions of southerners, American citizens, who believed in America and had suddenly become hostage to the slavers and traitors. Fighting these things is reasonable justification for aggression.

Really? Just who was in charge of this noble cause? I believe Lincoln promised to leave slavery alone.

I was referring more to outcomes than to statements by pols. I think both sides knew that the continuance of slavery was ultimately at stake, regardless of what they may have said.

Question - there's been a lot said about the constant reminders Confederate monuments have on the descendents of people held as slaves and the construction of these monuments in the early 1900s (I agree that they should come down), but I've never heard anyone say that putting Lincoln all over our money during the same time would have a similar effect on the southerners who lost loved ones in the war and had to use the money.

Was Lincoln added to the money as a jab at the losers? I don't know but expect that it was.

That has to be "a jab at the losers", but there's also: "Barry Schwartz, a sociologist who has examined America's cultural memory, argues that in the 1930s and 1940s, the memory of Abraham Lincoln was practically sacred and provided the nation with 'a moral symbol inspiring and guiding American life'."

... Lincoln was one of five people to be depicted on United States paper currency (federal issue) during their lifetime (along with Salmon P. Chase, Francis E. Spinner, Spencer M. Clark, and Winfield Scott). He has been featured on several denominations ($1, $5, $10, $20, $100, and $500) across different issues (e.g., Demand Notes, Legal Tender, Gold Certificates, Silver Certificates, etc.) since the first federally issued U.S. Bank Note in 1861....

Recognition of the Confederacy by the Union not only would have been an acceptance of slavery and of the dissolution of the nation, but it would have also been a betrayal of those millions of southerners, American citizens, who believed in America and had suddenly become hostage to the slavers and traitors. Fighting these things is reasonable justification for aggression.

Really? Just who was in charge of this noble cause? I believe Lincoln promised to leave slavery alone.

I was referring more to outcomes than to statements by pols. I think both sides knew that the continuance of slavery was ultimately at stake, regardless of what they may have said.

Unintended consequences are a weak justification for war.

Question - there's been a lot said about the constant reminders Confederate monuments have on the descendents of people held as slaves and the construction of these monuments in the early 1900s (I agree that they should come down), but I've never heard anyone say that putting Lincoln all over our money during the same time would have a similar effect on the southerners who lost loved ones in the war and had to use the money.

Was Lincoln added to the money as a jab at the losers? I don't know but expect that it was.

That has to be "a jab at the losers", but there's also: "Barry Schwartz, a sociologist who has examined America's cultural memory, argues that in the 1930s and 1940s, the memory of Abraham Lincoln was practically sacred and provided the nation with 'a moral symbol inspiring and guiding American life'."

My money is on Barry being from the North. His understanding of a sacred lincoln are likely online with a good ok southern boy's love for a robert e lee statue.

... Lincoln was one of five people to be depicted on United States paper currency (federal issue) during their lifetime (along with Salmon P. Chase, Francis E. Spinner, Spencer M. Clark, and Winfield Scott). He has been featured on several denominations ($1, $5, $10, $20, $100, and $500) across different issues (e.g., Demand Notes, Legal Tender, Gold Certificates, Silver Certificates, etc.) since the first federally issued U.S. Bank Note in 1861....

He may or may not consider Lincoln to be "sacred", but either way a sociologist can recognize society as seeing something in a "practically sacred" manner. Sociologists, in particular, can be infuriating for their distant and pretentious neutrality.

My point in including that quote was to show that some of the highest levels of esteem for Lincoln had nothing to do with taking jabs at the losers. That said, it's certainly possible that some of the reason for it was because of the South's ongoing racism and hostility, or it could have had more to do with the national crises of the 1930s and 1940s, idk.

Almost 80 teaching assistants are on a grade strike at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), refusing to distribute their students’ final marks until the school abandons a proposed plan to construct a building to house an infamous Confederate monument. The strike is the columination of a year of protests against the racist symbol....

The monument would be put in a brand-new building that would cost $5 million to construct and $800,000 a year to keep up....

Finesurrey said that the majority of students and faculty are, in fact, against the building being constructed—and that Blouin’s perception of First Amendment rights was curious. “The building will be a rallying point for Nazis, and it would be built across the street from a synagogue,” he said. According to Finesurrey, the existence of Silent Sam on campus is a violation of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits black students from being subjected to a hostile environment.

Finesurrey said he doesn't believe the school’s board is racist, but rather, they lack the motivation to act. “I don’t think they’re pro-confederate,” he said, “just cowards that want to hold onto their cushy jobs."

I read a story about a Mr. Lowery in Paterson NJ who wandered into a local police station early Saturday morning in an apparently intoxicated state (the story said he'd taken Ecstacy) foaming at the mouth and acting paranoid.....he said someone was trying to kill him, and then he wanted the cops to give him water. Well, the cops said they couldn't give him water because it "wasn't allowed" but they called an ambulance that took Mr. Lowery to the hospital. He died there the next day from what the medical examiner said was a beating. Anyway, there was a quote from a Mason Maher, who is the president of the local police officer union, and he says that the "officers acted professionally and got him the help he was in need of." Well, I went to the Paterson NJ police department site and proceeded to send Mason Maher my thoughts on this matter. Here ate the salient points I made: you're full of shit to say those officers acted professionally and got this guy help; he only wanted water....and I went on to say that you socialist workers (I figured this would piss him off to call him a socialist worker because I thought he probably doesn't even realize he is one) assume an air of superiority over the people you ostensibly work for and "help." I went on to explain to him that I figure those night shift officers at that station are going to end up costing the local taxpayers a lot of money because of their lack of common sense and their sense of superiority and authority. I signed my note "intestinally yours" and put my name on it. I forgot to mention Mr. Lowery was a black man.

I read a story about a Mr. Lowery in Paterson NJ who wandered into a local police station early Saturday morning in an apparently intoxicated state (the story said he'd taken Ecstacy) foaming at the mouth and acting paranoid.....

I read a story about a Mr. Lowery in Paterson NJ who wandered into a local police station early Saturday morning in an apparently intoxicated state (the story said he'd taken Ecstacy) foaming at the mouth and acting paranoid.....he said someone was trying to kill him, and then he wanted the cops to give him water. Well, the cops said they couldn't give him water because it "wasn't allowed" but they called an ambulance that took Mr. Lowery to the hospital. He died there the next day from what the medical examiner said was a beating. Anyway, there was a quote from a Mason Maher, who is the president of the local police officer union, and he says that the "officers acted professionally and got him the help he was in need of." Well, I went to the Paterson NJ police department site and proceeded to send Mason Maher my thoughts on this matter. Here ate the salient points I made: you're full of shit to say those officers acted professionally and got this guy help; he only wanted water....and I went on to say that you socialist workers (I figured this would piss him off to call him a socialist worker because I thought he probably doesn't even realize he is one) assume an air of superiority over the people you ostensibly work for and "help." I went on to explain to him that I figure those night shift officers at that station are going to end up costing the local taxpayers a lot of money because of their lack of common sense and their sense of superiority and authority. I signed my note "intestinally yours" and put my name on it. I forgot to mention Mr. Lowery was a black man.

Got a reply, sort of, from Detective Lt Maher but it was just a link to a story from New Jersey 101,5 which states that Mr. Lowery had suffered from meningitis for possibly years and that this contributed to his death. Meh.

A judge has overturned an Alabama law meant to prevent the removal of Confederate monuments from public property, ruling the act infringed on the rights of citizens in a mostly black city who are "repulsed" by a memorial in a city park.

The 10-page ruling issued late Monday by Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Graffeo said a 2017 state law barring the removal or alteration of historical monuments wrongly violated the free speech rights of local communities.

The law can't be enforced, Graffeo ruled, but the state attorney general's office said it would appeal.

The state sued the city of Birmingham after officials tried to remove a 52-foot-tall (16-meter)-tall obelisk that was erected to honor Confederate veterans in a downtown park in 1905. Rather than toppling the stone marker, the city built a 12-foot (3.6-meter)-tall wooden box around it.

Birmingham's population of 210,000 is more than 70 percent black, and the judge said it was indisputable that most citizens are "repulsed" by the memorial. He rejected the state's claims that lawmakers had the power to protect historical monuments statewide.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin told The Associated Press he was happy with the ruling.

There's been a lot to be angry about lately, but still, most of my ranting at home and here have been more about sports than trump. trump is an asshole and an idiot, born an breed a racist with money paving his way through and over everything - he will pass like a difficult big turd.

but these piece of filth, who accosted a Native American during his tribute to his fellow vietnam veterans who died in that war, with their fucking maget hats and their smirking faces put me over the top last night. Now we hear the punk's filthy mother is blaming the vet, the mayor is saying that he couldn't care less and bs church is saying we'll look into it - meanwhile nothing from the school that trained these magets.

Backpfeifengesicht doesn't fit. This kid and all the laughing whooping shitheads around him make me want to beat and beat and beat until my hands bleed.

But I won't, because I'm so much better than they are.

George Carlin said “The owners know the truth. It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

"We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan. 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, D.C. We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips. This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.

The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.

We know this incident also has tainted the entire witness of the March for Life and express our most sincere apologies to all those who attended the March and all those who support the pro-life movement."

I didn't read all of it - will do later. I did read a quote from him earlier that he didn't care to know the names of the scumbags
I guess knowing the racists in his town wouldn't be cool.

I'm sure that he and the whole area know the names by now. I tried googling, but the correct social media didn't pop up. Fwiw, he says the school isn't even in Covington, which would make it more apropos for the county commissioners to speak up, though it won't be for any of them to implement punishment.

And the church, isn't that about the same reaction that always had to their priests molesting children?

It was the church and school jointly, that's why I posted it. I'm okay with that much on the same day. We'll see what happens next.